On 09/28/2017 11:14 PM, Tim Taylor wrote:
It is too bad we don't have an organization that would be willing to lobby the FAA to allow lower powered or experimental approved transponders and ADS-B out solutions in Certified gliders that do not have an electrical generator. Wouldn't that have been a reasonable approach for the last ten years? Why does the power requirements for transponders change at 15k rather than 18k? All things that working with the FAI might have helped the glider community in the long run.


Some day, driven by requirements for drones, we'll have really low cost
collision avoidance. It will look absolutely nothing like a 250 watt
mode S transponder, hooked to an outrageously overengineered and
overpriced GPS, topped off with a $300 antenna.

For air-air avoidance, you'd need a watt or so of transmit power. Not
the low milliwatt power of PowerFlarm, that was driven by the
constraints of using unlicensed spectrum. Not 250 watts, that's the
legacy requirement of the FAA seeing you 200 miles away. Just something
that's reasonable to get the job done.

Technically, it would be easy build such a thing. Whether it would ever
be approved for use in gliders, that's highly debatable.